The Flatlanders

Comprising three of Texas's most revered songwriters—Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock—The Flatlanders are an iconic country band that first collaborated in the early 1970s. They have reunited over the years for a string of well-crafted alternative country albums, including the latest, The Odessa Tapes, which was originally recorded in 1972 in Odessa, Texas, and thought to be lost.

This concert is part of Late Nights at Zankel Hall.

Performers

The Flatlanders

Bios

The Flatlanders

The fact that Texas music titans Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock-on their
first go-round as The Flatlanders in 1972-were completely rejected by the country music
establishment is surprising in retrospect but, ultimately, poetic. That each went on to
have formidable solo careers is a testament to their talent and determination. Add to this
their diverse yet complimentary styles-Joe the streetwise rocker, Jimmie Dale the mystic
with the classic country voice, and Butch the cerebral folksinger-and you've got a story of
one of the most extraordinary kinships in American musical history.

The group had only a handful of gigs before they cut an album-length tape at a little
studio in Odessa, Texas, in 1972. The 14 songs recorded on reel-to-reel tape arguably
marked the birth of alternative country music, but nothing came of the recording and it was
left unheard for decades.

A month after that forgotten session, The Flatlanders traveled to Nashville for yet another
recording opportunity. More of a song-swap than a commercial endeavor, the band's
eight-track release was barely distributed, though it has since been recognized as a
landmark in progressive, alternative country music. Disillusioned by the poor sales, The
Flatlanders-a local term for folks who live in the kind of landscape the southwest has to
spare-disbanded, though the friendships continued.

The trio occasionally reunited for special occasions, such as when Robert Redford asked
them to record a song for the soundtrack to The Horse Whisperer in 1998. And
two years later, the legendary group became a bona fide working band, recording a steady
stream of highly acclaimed new albums-Now Again (2002), Wheels of
Fortune (2004), and Hills & Valleys (2009).

Some 40 years after their first foray into the recording booth, The Odessa
Tapes was released, featuring the original 14 songs from the 1972 Odessa session.
The Odessa Tapes captures-without any polish-the special blend of country,
folk, roots, and cosmic energy The Flatlanders pioneered.

K. Leander Williams on The Flatlanders

In the collective psyche, Lubbock, Texas—the city where The
Flatlanders were formed in the early 1970s—will probably always be
associated with rock 'n' roll pioneer Buddy Holly. It's no wonder.
Situated in West Texas, it was the town that launched Holly's
meteoric ascent into rock history, a legacy that has had
implications the world over, perhaps most auspiciously in the
British industrial city of Liverpool within a year of the plane
crash that killed Holly in 1959. Teenagers George Harrison, John
Lennon, and Paul McCartney decided to name their nascent band after
a harmless insect in polite homage to Holly's Chirping
Crickets.

Musicologist and historian Ned Sublette remembers Lubbock fondly in
his recent book, The Year Before the Flood, about the
vibrant musical culture in New Orleans just prior to Hurricane
Katrina. During the author's adolescence in the '60s, his maternal
grandmother lived in Lubbock in a house on 19th Street; his dad,
also a scholar, had taken a job at a university in neighboring New
Mexico, precipitating regular family sojourns east into Texas. "The
drive from Portales to Lubbock was an endless two-hour trip,"
writes Sublette, "on two-lane state roads through mostly pure
flatness, punctuated by a couple of gentle rises and falls that
seemed breathtaking, especially if there had been a little rain in
June and everything had briefly turned from its normal yellow-brown
to a glorious green."

More than one writer has speculated about how the emptiness of
those sprawling West Texas plains sparked the imaginations of
singer-songwriters Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock.
At the turn of the '70s, each was a young adult who had found
himself back in Lubbock after rambling here and there. They were
sharing a house on 14th Street just more than 40 years ago, when
they decided to make a go at teaming up. The wider world kept
beckoning—much as it had Holly before them—and continued to follow
each Flatlander, even after their disappointment at the ill-fated
yet ultimately iconic Nashville recording session in 1972 that
eventually made the partnership legendary. (Tellingly, they've been
friends for life ever since, despite going their separate ways
until the '90s.) It's almost as if the universe was trying to fill
that mystic, undefinable space Gilmore searches for in one of The
Flatlanders' masterpieces, "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go
Downtown."

"I think I'm gonna look around," he offers, wistfully. "For
something I couldn't see when this world was more real to me."
Thankfully, the universe made the Lubbockites an offer to make a
mark on world culture that the trio couldn't refuse.

—K. Leander Williams has been around the block a few times and has
yet to tire of the scenery. He lives in Brooklyn.

Watch

The Flatlanders perform "I Know You" from their album The Odessa Tapes.